Louise Harrison had emigrated from Liverpool to Benton, a town in Illinois, with her then-husband, Gordon Caldwell. She was later naturalised as a US citizen.

She had championed the Beatles' singles in the US, but in 1995 she and a group of her neighbours turned her former home, where Harrison had slept in 1963, into a bed and breakfast with its own Beatles museum.

The move led to a rift between the two and they did not speak.

Dorothy Schultz, a co-owner of the bed and breakfast, said Louise had told her of the split and added, "She called it their little tiff."